ASHGATE RESEARCH 1 COMPANION
The History of Heritage
David C. Harvey
It is so customary to think of the historical past in terms of narrative, sequences, dates and chronologies that we are apt to suppose these things a ributes of the past itself. But they are not; we ourselves put them there (Lowenthal, 1985, 219).
When writing histories of institutions, one would, ideally, like to start at the beginning. With heritage, however, although one can insert various developments such as the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act of 1882, or the publication of John Ruskin’s Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) into a meaningful narrative, the definition of a strict chronology, let alone the resolution of a ‘beginning’, appear to be arbitrary. Indeed, as I have argued elsewhere, even the frequently cited notion that heritage is somehow inexorably connected to ‘modernity’ is problematical (Harvey, 2001). Heritage itself is not a thing and does not exist by itself – nor does it imply a movement or a project. Rather, heritage is about the process by which people use the past – a ‘discursive construction’ with material consequences (see Smith, 2006, 11–13). As a human condition therefore, it is omnipresent, interwoven within the power dynamics of any society and intimately bound up with identity construction at both communal and personal levels. It would, for instance, be impossible to date such a popular mnemonic device relating to the weather as ‘red sky at night, shepherd’s delight’. Yet the role of this saying as an item of heritage, the meaning of which is founded upon idealized representations of a collective past and which has purpose (or use value) in the present, together with a sense of projection into the future, is clear. Rather, what we can aempt to outline is a history of heritage in terms of a history of power relations that have been formed and operate via the deployment of the heritage process. This chapter, therefore, focuses upon the historical narrative of the changing forms of this process; its developing technologies, modes of representation and levels of access and control – in short, upon the history of the struggle to control the use of heritage within society. The link between heritage and identity within such a project tends to focus upon the control and use of heritage by official powers, and oen concentrates on the nation as the primary vehicle for such a project. Indeed, Smith (2006, 11) sees a hegemonic ‘authorized heritage discourse’ that acts to validate a ‘set of practices and performances, which populates both popular and expert constructions of T A R C H I
“heritage” and undermines alternative and subaltern ideas about heritage’. To paraphrase George Orwell’s much-quoted comment: ‘who controls the present controls the past’. As well as underscoring the ‘presentness’ and political purpose of heritage, however, this phrase also pushes to the fore the way in which heritage is used with an eye to the future, rather than allowing one-dimensional ideas of preservation to obscure our task. Although a ‘history of heritage’ will inevitably tend to focus upon the big identity politics of heritage control at an official (and oen national) level, we should not forget the importance of the personal and local heritage – ‘small heritages’ if you like – about which it is impossible and largely meaningless to write such a general history. As well as being alternative or ‘subaltern’ or actively resisting authority, these small heritages can also be everyday and even banal. Indeed, in a recent oral history project in Devon (UK), for instance, a farmer recalled the familial saying that was associated with his farm: ‘further from the farm, closer to the clay’ (see Riley and Harvey, 2007). The farmer went on to explain how the deeper topsoil of the land close to the holding still dictated the way in which he could plant crops around the farm, and le the research team mulling over exactly how long such a saying had been in use – how many generations of people residing in that valley had farmed according to this localized heritage of intimate and personal memory of the past, formed in the present, and set for use in the future? As will be discussed below, it is towards such small heritages that much aention, policy and practice is focused at present; as confidence in meta-narratives of heritage purpose is being questioned, it is through such small heritages that an answer may be at hand. Reflecting the experience of the author, the chapter focuses very much on the politics of, and struggles over, the control of heritage in Britain. By grounding the ‘British story’ in theories of heritage and history culture, processes of institutionalization, democratization, developing technology and themes of agency and social power, I hope to make this story of wider relevance.
Some Theoretical Terrain
For this chapter, I have taken heritage to refer to ‘a contemporary product shaped from history’ (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996, 20). This concise definition conveys that heritage is subjective and filtered with reference to the present, whenever that present actually is. It is a value-laden concept, related to processes of economic and cultural commodification, but intrinsically reflective of a relationship with the past, however that past is perceived and defined (Harvey, 2001, 327). The definition of heritage, not as the result of a movement or project (connected with modernity or otherwise), but as the product of a present-centred process would, on the face of it, seem to sidestep the whole issue of the need to delineate a history of it. Heritage resides in the here and now – whenever and wherever that here and now happens to be.1 In practice, however, the proclamation of the human need for heritage, shared by all societies, provides
1 This implied truncation of temporal depth is discussed in Harvey (2001).
20 T H k H scope for a much greater engagement in historical analysis than was previously the case (Dodgshon, 1999; Harvey, 2001). Most importantly, the extending temporal scope that is implied overturns the traditional historical concern for imposing a supposedly objective chronology onto a linear past receding behind us, by foregrounding the importance of both contemporary context, and of concern for the future. ‘Every society has had a relationship with its past, even those which have chosen to ignore it’ (Harvey, 2001, 320). By extending the temporal scope of heritage both backwards and forwards, it becomes possible to conceive of a history of heritage – or ‘heritage of heritage’ – that has more power; heritage heroes such as William Morris, for instance, can be placed not as elements of an inevitable sequence of growing heritage concern, nor even in the context of their own time, but in the context of our needs and yearnings for a specific past and our desires for a particular future. In order to provide a historical narrative of heritage as a process (and I should emphasize that this is ‘a’ historical narrative, rather than ‘the history of …’), we need to define more clearly what is under review, and how it may be approached. As numerous authors have intimated, heritage is very difficult to define (Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2000; Harvey, 2001; Larkham, 1995; Schouten, 1995; Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). ‘Far from being fatally predetermined or God- given, [heritage] is in large measure our own marvellously malleable creation’ (Lowenthal, 1998, 226). Emphasizing its lack of fixity and the presentness of its creation, Lowenthal implies an innate sense of dispute – or dissonance – within heritage that other authors have underlined (Tunbridge and Ashworth, 1996). However, questions about agency (just who is doing the creating? Who is us?), together with questions about the means through which heritage is conveyed and knowledge produced, are le somewhat hanging. Drawing on the theoretical work of Holtorf (2002, 2.6), one can portray heritage as a vehicle (oen, but not only, a site) where cultural memory and various phenomena of history culture reside. Cultural memory comprises the collective understandings of the past as they are held by a people in any given social and historical context (Holtorf, 2002, 2.0). Ideas of cultural memory are, therefore, laden with politics and power relationships as statements about the past become meaningful through becoming embedded within the cultural and material context of a particular time. Nora (1989, 7) talks of processes of crystallization as memory ‘secretes’ itself around certain sites, objects, places, practices and concepts and is given value for particular ends. This retrospective memory, according to Holtorf (2002, 2.0) therefore, manifests itself through history culture – the ways that the past is ‘presenced’ in everyday life, supporting, augmenting and guiding collective identities that reflect both a conscious and unconscious ‘will to remember’. In addition, the sense of purpose with which people ‘remember’ the past serves to underline the importance of understanding how people situate themselves with respect to the future. In this respect, heritage may be understood in terms of a prospective memory, as tokens that represent a desired future – reflecting both future pasts and past futures. The act of conferring the label ‘heritage’ onto something – whether physical or otherwise – provides a sense of purpose. Resonant of Geary’s (1994, 12) observation that ‘all memory is memory for something’, this sense of purpose that heritage conveys must be
21 T A R C H I recognized and its history understood, as purposes change with changing times (Holtorf, 2002, 2.8). This chapter, therefore, explores how cultural memory has developed over time – how collective understandings of the past have reflected changing social and historical contexts – and has been articulated through numerous places, objects, sites, sayings, concepts, traditions and practices that may be denoted as heritage. In terms of these changing contexts, this is a story of institutional dynamism, technological development, and changing access to the production, consumption and performance of heritage.
The Heritage of Heritage: Adding some Temporal Depth
Heritage, as a present-centred phenomenon, has always been with us. In all ages people have used retrospective memories as resources of the past to convey a fabricated sense of destiny for the future. Heritage, in this sense, can be found, interpreted, given meanings, classified, presented, conserved and lost again, and again, and again within any age (Harvey, 2006). Taking a long historical view, one can find ancient Romans venerating and actively aempting to emulate the heritage of ancient Greece (Lowenthal, 1985; Wardman, 1976), while the heritage of both cultures has formed a cornerstone of many social, aesthetic, cultural and political movements ever since. Most obviously, this can be seen through Renaissance and neo-Classical movements in early modern Europe. Even in the medieval period, however, invocation of Roman heritage helped to transform the city of Rome into Christendom’s foremost metropolis (Boholm, 1997), while more recently, its heritage enhanced the prestige and authority of Mussolini’s brand of fascism (Atkinson and Cosgrove, 1998). The heritage of Rome has obviously travelled far beyond its city walls and the Italian peninsula, with its influence being felt around the entire world, even if only through the language and practices of the senate and the forum. A consideration of its heritage, therefore, cannot be tied down either in time or space. Rome’s Pagan inheritance has been re-interpreted and used by the Catholic Church to enhance the authority of the Pope, while both democrats and fascists have sought Rome’s succour and protection in the present, together with guidance for a desired future, through models of government and law.2 A veneer of continuity, preservation and reverence for the past conceals a process of dynamic modification, as external demands hegemonically reconstruct traditions in line with present authoritative desires (Boholm, 1997, 267). In medieval Europe, it was the Catholic Church that dominated the mediation of official heritage through its control over access to, and interpretation of, symbolic heritage resources and the technology (especially through writing and monumental architecture) for conveying these resources to the population. As an enduring, immensely wealthy, hierarchical and extremely bureaucratic organization, the
2 Indeed, the word fascist derives from the fasces – the bundle of rods that, in ancient Rome, served as the symbol of authority for magistrates.
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Church invoked a particular view of the world that drew heavily on carefully mediated heritage in order to pursue its largely abstract and supposedly non- material aims (Sack, 1986). From St Gregory’s instruction to ‘cleanse heathen shrines and use them as churches’ (Blair, 1988, 50), to the invocation of the Pope as a direct descendant of St Peter, the Church used heritage to mould a picture of the world that reflected the needs of the present (Harvey, 2001, 331). Some people may complain that in the early twenty-first century, great cathedrals are now treated as museums and heritage theme-parks rather than sacred sites of personal faith and religious devotion. However, a visit to a cathedral has always been a highly mediated and controlled heritage-related event. Just like museums, their layout and architecture, fixtures and fiings, practices and ritual, are carefully choreographed, replicated and constructed in order to convey messages about the ‘order of things’ as represented through a specific notion of the past (see, for instance, Frayling, 1995, 39–79). The history of this Catholic strand of heritage since the medieval period has, at least in an official capacity, therefore, largely been one of dynamic power relationships. Over time there has been an increase in the level of what might be termed ‘democracy’ within the construction and consumption of heritage, and a shi towards the nation as the key axis through which heritage is replicated, together with an increasing role of the state as arbiter. The history of heritage is a history of the present, or rather, a historical narrative of an endless succession of presents, a heritage of heritage that can have no terminal point. The recognition of this view allows a much greater temporal depth, providing scope thereby to talk not only about a medieval heritage of Rome, or a Roman heritage of Greece, but also a prehistoric sense of heritage (Holtorf, 2002, 2.9). Although detailed specifics are necessarily sketchy, vague and oen hotly disputed, Holtorf (2002, 6.6) cogently argues that all archaeologists’ theories for understanding megalithic monuments can be read as theories about different ‘prospective memories’ – prospective memories for the future that draw upon a reservoir of symbolic capital (or heritage) from the past. To add some flesh to the bones of these quite abstract ideas, it is necessary to focus on a case study – that of Avebury – and trace some elements of its life history, as its meanings, its interpretations and even its physical appearances have been recycled, manoeuvred and redeployed countless times over many generations.
Avebury: a Recent (Life) History of Heritage
Avebury is a World Heritage Site centred on a very large-scale megalithic complex in Wiltshire, southern England. Although only inscribed by UNESCO in 1986, it has been a site of special significance for at least 4,000 years (Burl, 2002; Chadburn and Pomeroy-Kellinger, 2001). There has been much speculation about its purpose, with various accounts interpreting the site as a marker for the dead, a focal point for the living, an ideological statement, a ceremonial instrument, or a mnemonic marker. All such accounts interpret Avebury as being useful in the present, resonant of a past, and meaningful for a future time. In other words, Avebury can be viewed as
23 T A R C H I an item of heritage that is expressive of prospective memories in whatever era one chooses (Holtorf, 2002, 6.6). Burl (2002, 225) notes that there is general agreement that Avebury was a religious centre for fertility cults linked with the earth, the sun, ritual objects and bones, but adds (226) that the ‘truths’ of the maer surrounding the building of the site must necessarily always be a maer of speculation. The nature and number of versions of Avebury as an item of heritage that existed prior to the modern era can only be guessed at, but that it represented an item of history culture, where the past was made present, seems certain. Burl (2002, 257) notes that it took five centuries and upwards of some 30 generations of men and women to build the original site – people whose collective cultural memories should be recognized as being embedded within the site, even if their meaning cannot be decoded. Instead, I now turn to Avebury’s place in the more recent history of heritage – its heritage biography over the last 300 years. UNESCO’s description of Avebury being of ‘outstanding universal value’ (Chadburn and Pomeroy-Kellinger, 2001, 1) underlines the present-centredness of its meaning as a vehicle of cultural memory in the late twentieth century. Avebury is now a site with a management plan that seeks to co-ordinate various interested parties and a research agenda for assessing the heritage resource and for uncovering the history of the site ‘from the lower Palaeolithic to the end of the medieval period’ (AAHRG, 2001, vi). This seems to have very lile to say about Avebury as a purposeful ‘memory factory’ since the end of the medieval period.3 The amateur archaeologist and court gossip, John Aubrey, visited Avebury in 1648 and drew a sketch of the site in 1663 (Harvey, 2003, 477). Schnapp (1993, 194) portrays Aubrey as a key figure in the early development of archaeological science, but if we place his work within the context of later seventeenth-century cultural memory, we see the stirrings of a history culture that is based on the idea of the nation as the key vehicle of collective identity. By the invocation of a distinctly British druidry as the original builders of Avebury, John Aubrey sought to support the Restoration monarchy and undermine the position of Rome as the singular arbiter of historical narrative (Harvey, 2003, 478). Whatever the truth of Avebury’s past, Aubrey’s enthusiasm for using the site as evidence for a distinct imagined national community represented a novel development in the history of how heritage resources were articulated. Even the notion that there was a ‘history’ before the Roman occupation of Britain was a new idea (Schnapp, 1993, 191–2; Trigger, 1989, 48). While not ‘anti-Biblical’ as such, this development does appear to represent a key moment in terms of the secularization of cultural memory and the breaking of a religious monopoly over the official interpretation and use of what may be termed ‘heritage resources’. Although less interested in UNESCO’s notions of ‘universal value’ and preservation, John Aubrey’s work represents the beginnings of what might be termed a conscious fabrication of a national destiny that draws from a reservoir of heritage-related cultural capital (Harvey, 2003, 478). Although the process of deploying heritage in the service of nation building has been put forward for an earlier time (see, for instance, Hastings, 1997 and
3 The phrase ‘memory factory’ is from Dietler (1998).
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Bengtson, 1997), the conscious articulation of the nation as a horizontally imagined community of people with a distinct heritage and sense of destiny appears to gather pace from the seventeenth century (see Cressy, 1994). At Avebury, the interpretation and articulation of the site became, in the eighteenth century, a vehicle for William Stukeley’s brand of siege-mentality anti-Catholicism:
We have no reason to think but that the Druids, in this island of ours, generally kept up to the purity of their first and patriarchal institution. […] On the Continent, idolatry crept on by degrees. […] These temples [such as Avebury] used to be everywhere but only survived well in this island of ours (Stukeley, 1743, iii).
Interestingly, although Stukeley is at pains to deploy the ancient remains at Avebury as a token of Britain’s Protestant providence, this was not a time in which all of the island’s population could share in the celebration of this constructed heritage, and, despite the personal joy shown over the survival of the monuments, Stukeley is not a heritage conservator in the modern sense:
My intent is (besides preserving the memory of these extraordinary monuments, so much to the honour of our country, now in great danger of ruin) to promote as much as I am able to, the Knowledge and the practice of the ancient and true Religion (Stukeley, 1740, 1).
Stukeley (1743, 16) chastises the local villagers for their ignorance and avarice in breaking up the stones, but what he ‘seeks to rescue before it is too late’ (Stukeley, 1743, iii) is not the preserved stones and physical remains, but the retrospective memory of the site, to be deployed in present-centred and future-oriented interjections into the identity and religious politics of the nation. In terms of the history of heritage, therefore, we see here an appeal to a sense of nationhood founded upon a distinct heritage. However, this is not an appeal to the masses for verification and there is lile sentiment to preserve any physical remains. The heritage resource, then, is a vehicle of expression, but not one that may be described as at all democratic in either its production or consumption, whether in pretension or reality; the ‘wretched villagers’ get a mention (Stukeley, 1743, 16), but their understandings and uses of heritage remain of lile importance. The quasi-official heritage accounts of the intelligentsia in the eighteenth century were produced and consumed by a very narrow section of society. While the newspapers and intellectual societies represented new media through which such heritage concerns could be articulated, the cultural memory that was sanctioned remained a tiny (yet influential) proportion of the total representative history culture. When the British Museum opened in 1753, for instance, a sample of heritage that represented elite culture was displayed to a discerning upper echelon of society more as a means to support and nurture a supposed natural order of things than as a means to educate. The opening of the British Museum does, however, reflect a growing concern for ‘collection’, for inventorizing and for
25 T A R C H I public display that would evolve over the following 250 years to form one of the cornerstones of today’s heritage impulse. At Avebury, the early nineteenth century witnessed a movement towards greater direct public participation in heritage through the production of what must be one of the first detailed heritage guide-books that was consciously produced for a mass audience. Henry Browne’s (1823) Illustration of Stonehenge and Abury, in the County of Wiltshire continues Stukeley’s concern with the site as being provided by God’s providence for the purpose of national celebration of Britain’s (Protestant) population (Harvey, 2007). Once again, a sense of destiny is prominent:
[The preservation of Stonehenge and Avebury] gives an ascendancy in importance to this our country to all others – an ascendancy which we see paralleled at the present moment in its being alone selected to make known the revealed will of God throughout the earth. And is this li le spot, an island, … destined before all others to this great, this mighty, this most glorious of ends! (Browne, 1823, vii).
Heritage, in this sense, tells us that it is not just Britain’s moral duty, but its destiny to bring its version of civilization to all corners of the world. Browne’s guide was republished many times throughout the nineteenth century, underscoring the increasing reach of such heritage interpretation through cheaper printing technology and wider distribution to an expanding middle class.4 Rather than dwelling on the need to conserve the universal heritage of ancestors (as in the UNESCO ideal), Browne’s brand of heritage is precise concerning its link to the present-centred identity politics of the nation. In contrast to earlier notions of heritage, it is also transparent in its call to preserve the physical remains:
Do not then, my countrymen, let these testimonies to your unparalleled eminence, even from the beginning of time [that is, Avebury and Stonehenge] stand unprotected. Oh! Let not the rude and ignorant demolish what is le of these venerable piles, these truly precious relics of antiquity, – acceptable I cannot but believe, even in the sight of God himself (Browne, 1823, 41).
Reading today almost as a ‘mission statement’ of an imaginary campaigning heritage organization, Browne’s words reflected wider views that matched a great feeling of certainty and faith in a sense of destiny, unease over the huge industrial, social, economic and political upheavals that were taking place in the present, and a nostalgia for a distant past that might act as a map to steer us to the Promised Land.
4 This is resonant of Anderson’s (1983) arguments about the importance of print capitalism for the expanding notion of an imagined national community.
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Placing Avebury into Context: Heritage Heroes and the Nationalization of the Past in the Nineteenth Century
Technological advances in printing and distribution allowed such figures as Walter Sco to populate the historical landscape, revolutionizing the experience of the past for a newly heritage-literate popular audience (Brooks, 1998; Chiy, 1999; Mandler, 1997). The early nineteenth century also saw the increasing use of heritage not as a confirmation of supposed natural order/superiority, but as a comparison to prompt action and social change. Resonant of Browne’s ‘call to arms’ (above), this notion of heritage as a campaigning totem developed within quite different socio-political contexts. Augustus Pugin’s polemical Contrasts portrayed heritage as a reactionary answer to a supposed moral malaise, while John Ruskin sought a more progressive society through heritage – albeit one that sees social cohesion as part of an organically hierarchical society (Brooks, 1998, 8–10). As the nineteenth century progressed, heritage became the vehicle for both ‘conservative’ and ‘radical/progressive’ movements searching for an answer to the perceived evils of modern society. Cultural elites, as represented by figures such as George Gilbert Sco and the Cambridge Camden Society (and, indeed, as witnessed at many a provincial museum and amateur intellectual society) sought to maintain natural hierarchy and authority as a specific way of reading the world (Brand, 1998, 13–14; Miele, 1998, 106–7). William Morris, in contrast, used heritage as a means to encourage social and economic revolution. It is from figures such as Morris and the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) that a concern for preservation (as opposed to restoration or ‘reconstitution’) comes. This tacit regard for absolute authenticity in one form or another has, in many respects, become one of the main touchstones (and some would say, red herrings) in heritage discussion ever since – and one which viewing heritage as a present-centred process in whatever age seeks to bypass (see, for instance, Harvey, 2001; Hewison, 1987). It is perhaps ironic that many modern conservation lobbies and societies inherited William Morris’s ideals of artefactual authenticity without his distinct dislike of many of the (Georgian and Victorian) artefacts and buildings that they now seek to conserve. Indeed, the invocation of absolute artefactual authenticity is more usually associated with conservative and reactionary social aitudes. In the mid-nineteenth century, the popularization of the past through heritage was connected very strongly to the nation, and was reflected in the founding of the Department of British and Medieval Antiquities and Ethnography within the British Museum in 1866 (MacGregor, 1998, 136). Following the Museums Act (1845) and the Great Exhibition (1851), provincial museums developed apace, with Britain having 90 museums in 1860, 180 in 1880 and 295 in 1914. However, MacGregor (1998) shows that this expansion of formalized and inventoried resources largely remained within the hands of the privileged and powerful. More provocative is Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge’s comment (2000, 14) that the ‘will to conserve was the obsession of a passionate, educated and generally influential minority, and the social, educational and political characteristics of heritage producers have changed lile since the nineteenth century’. The Victorian museum, together with
27 T A R C H I the expansion of archaeological and historical societies, may have held ideals of democratizing heritage through making the consumption of heritage resources more open, but access to and choices over the production and formal interpretation of this resource remained in the hands of the few. We have already seen how Walter Sco (for instance) opened up the beginnings of what may be termed a ‘mass market’ for popular national heritage (Brooks, 1998; Chiy, 1999). Mandler (1997, 33) identifies this strand of heritage as one that was less interested in ‘real events’ and instead keen to consume what he describes as ‘olden- time’; a time between medieval rudeness and the over-refinement of the aristocracy in the early modern period. Such processes of mass consumption witnessed the first stirrings of popular heritage fashions. Elizabethanism and the popularity of Shakespeare as the national bard can be seen as expressions of a popular concern for the heritage of ‘merrie England’ (for instance, Howkins, 1986), while a fashion for Saxonism was supported by a cult of Alfred the Great together with the best- selling novel Hereward the Wake (1865) by Charles Kingsley. The institution that seems to bring all of these essentially nineteenth-century facets together is the National Trust (see Murphy, 2002; Newby, 1995; Weideger, 1994).5 Founded along campaigning lines in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley, the Trust sought social change but was also wholly embedded within educated, privileged and influential circles. It had strong connections to a range of enlightened aristocrats, a unique relationship with the state (the Trust is constituted through a series of National Trust Acts, 1907–71) and a concern for popularizing a purposively ‘national’ heritage agenda. Although originally more interested in open landscapes and medieval buildings, the National Trust became increasingly involved in the maintenance and preservation of country houses and gardens, largely through laws of inheritance tax and the opportunism of James Lees-Milne (the Secretary of the National Trust’s Country House Commiee, 1936– 50). From its nadir in the 1930s and 1940s, the country house has transformed into being a public symbol of national pride (Mandler, 1997), and the National Trust was very much at the forefront of this process. ‘The great houses of England were brought into “public” ownership by confident delegation, by mild nepotism, … this was the old boy network’s finest hour; their noblest nationalization’ (The Times, quoted in Lowenthal, 1998, 65). In terms of our wider themes in the history of heritage, the work of the National Trust appears to extend the campaigning elements of Ruskin and Morris. However, it directs its efforts not at social revolution, but at meeting and manipulating a public appetite for the ‘olden-time’. A carefully mediated past needs to be revered and conserved for the good of the nation, and an ideal (or veneer) of continuity – whether in physical presence or in terms of genetic lineage – should be adhered to (Wright, 1985). The achievement of this carefully mediated heritage product, however, has oen meant that some bits have had to be le out of the narrative
5 Formed as The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty in 1895, the National Trust covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The National Trust for Scotland was established in 1931.
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– elided, covered over or simply destroyed – while what exists appears to support a conservative and backward-looking agenda of nostalgia that is a long way from the ideals of its founders.
Placing Avebury into Context: Moving into the Twentieth Century
During the twentieth century, Avebury underwent more large-scale and rapid changes in its form and meaning than at almost any other phase of its existence. Mirroring some of the ideals of public exemplification and national pride that we saw in the later nineteenth century, during the first half of the twentieth century there were efforts to transform Avebury into a ‘public’ and ‘national’ monument on a grand scale. Carried by the finance and vision of the amateur archaeologist and marmalade magnate Alexander Keiller, the site was physically transformed, stones moved and reconfigured, ‘out of place’ buildings pulled down and an entire landscape moulded. On the one hand, Keiller seemed uneasy about the ‘onslaught of [the] minions of modernity’,6 yet he himself was at the forefront of thoroughly modern agendas and practices at Avebury, pioneering aerial photography, using bulldozers and dynamite for archaeological ‘reconstruction’, and pursuing a publicity-conscious programme of interpretation and display. Concrete posts marked the spots where stones once stood, roads were widened and car parks built to facilitate greater public access to the site. Keiller’s self-confessed sense of public duty was matched by a desire to engage the public that was perhaps ahead of his time:
… the whole will be laid to grass, fences removed altogether (or transferred to more suitable situations). This part of the monument (which has hitherto been rigorously preserved as private property by Jenner) thrown freely open to the public, with appropriate notice boards to explain its significance, as well as the layout of the site as a whole (Le er to Cookie, 6 April 1937: Alexander Keiller Museum [AKM], MS 20000639.3).
Keiller’s manufacture of a ‘Neolithic’ landscape, supposedly untainted by all other influences, yet fully accessible to a burgeoning twentieth-century leisure and heritage market, meant that buildings from later periods – even medieval coages – had to go. In 1938, Keiller had placed one of his own men in a rented coage owned by someone else, so that a ‘form of dysentery which has smien his entire family’ could be used as a threat to the building’s owner in order to force a sale for the purposes of demolition.7 Although not outwardly pursuing such underhanded techniques, the Ministry of Works and the National Trust continued these practices aer Keiller’s death in October 1955.
6 Leer, 15 September 1923, to O.G.S. Crawford. 7 Leer, 22 January 1938; AKM, MS. box 78510174 (88024128).
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In June, following the demolition of the Old Baptist Chapel in High Street and farm buildings in the adjoining yard, the whole of the site was converted into a much-needed car park. We have also completely cleared away the row of four co ages which extended right up to the Cove, the Red Lion garage which stood on the corner opposite Perry’s shop, and the old Turnpike Co age. … Several more buildings, including the Manse and the farm buildings behind it are ear-marked to come down as soon as they become vacant (Le er from W.E.V. Young [site manager] to Mr Gray, 7 January 1957; AKM, MS. Files 88024572).
What we witness at Avebury during the mid-twentieth century, therefore, is in line with heritage agendas elsewhere, with new techniques of presentation underlining more democratic and public consumption practices, but with production and formal heritage mediation still firmly in the hands of privileged and educated experts. The social elite, however, was now more commonly relegated to influencing agendas through their quasi-official roles on such bodies as the National Trust or outlets of the formal state. In the laer half of the twentieth century, the standard description of heritage, no longer as a ‘social movement’, but an ‘industry’, became commonplace, as did its easy relation to conservatism both with a small ‘c’ and a big ‘C’ (see Hewison, 1987; 1988; Wright, 1985). However, these commentaries, while grasping a sense of fear and decline-driven nostalgia that seemed to be apparent in some elite heritage circles, nonetheless failed to understand the full scope of the heritage process. Raphael Samuel’s (1994) sharp criticism of the Hewison agenda, for instance, drew particular aention to the growth of aractions and practices associated with industrial heritage, painting a far more democratic and open-ended view of a heritage that was ‘of the people’ rather than ‘for the people’. This focus on industrial heritage, which had been largely ignored by bodies such as the National Trust for many years, was linked to the past campaigns of figures such as William Morris and Octavia Hill, but through celebrating the ordinary, the everyday and the anonymous over the high culture of the proverbial ‘great and good’, eschewed the concerns of the traditional heritage expert. Resonant with Ruskin or Pugin, lessons could still be learnt from the ‘heritage of our ancestors’, but these lessons no longer preached fear of industrial modernity. Rather, these lessons forsook the need to go back to a supposedly beer place, in favour of a sense of progression to a new and beer future in which the struggles of the past were celebrated rather than aped. For much of this work, a general appeal to ideas of the nation, a certain reverence to particular artefacts, objects, sites and buildings, together with a simplified historical narrative – albeit one that was increasingly confident in an ideal of progress – was commonplace, and all was set within a growing awareness that tourism and leisure time were the proper contexts for public consumption of heritage. However, the last two decades of the twentieth century saw important changes in all these assumptions.
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A decreasing appeal to the nation as the foremost container of identity mirrored the wider political, social and economic transitions of the time, and the trajectory of heritage towards the local, and even personal, became increasingly recognized. On an altogether different scale, the recognition of a common or global sense of heritage though such schemes as the UNESCO system, for instance, particularly in relation to the natural world, also became important. In practice, these processes oen acted to turn aention away from revered objects and artefacts, and towards an emotional spectrum that had hitherto been largely unacknowledged. In some respects, the need to provoke in order to get a message across was a consequence of dealing with subject maer – such as the slave trade, for instance – for which there were very few meaningful or aesthetically pleasing objects and for which an emotional appeal could garner most purchase. In other respects, the expansion of what has been labelled ‘hot heritage’ (Uzzell, 1989) mirrored a wider transition within heritage practices and processes that may also be witnessed in the so called ‘new museology’ movement of the 1990s (Hooper-Greenhill, 1992; 2000; McDonald and Fyfe, 1996; Moore, 1997; Vergo, 1989). New subject maer, new techniques of display and curatorship, new technologies and a new sense of purpose characterizes this movement. For possibly the first time since their inception, the worth and meaning of museums and their collections, interpretations and politics of display, have been critically examined. The heritage sector as a whole has repositioned itself slightly, eschewing mere entertainment and leisure and promoting its role in agendas of education and social cohesion.8 New heritage practices, such as live re-enactments, oral history projects and conservation volunteering, have blurred the boundaries between producers and consumers (see, for example, Orr, 2006). Meanwhile, in the UK, a government agenda of social inclusion, supported by a funding system that is epitomized by the Heritage Loery Fund’s (HLF) mission to ‘encourage more people to be involved in and make decisions about their heritage’, and in ‘widening participation among people of all ages and backgrounds – especially people from communities who have not been involved in heritage before’,9 has provided impetus for local communities and even individuals to become concerned with heritage.10 Bodies such as the National Trust still exist and, despite a broadening of their community appeal in recent years, largely remain at the forefront of an agenda that foregrounds nostalgia at the specifically national, aesthetically pleasing and elite-centred scale. The HLF has also hit some sticky patches over providing what some would argue is too much funding for what is seen as elite culture,11 but in their self- proclaimed mission to ‘listen carefully to the changing ways in which an evolving society values the past’ (HLF, 2002, 1), they reveal a refreshing aitude to heritage
8 Black History month is a good example of this. 9 Heritage Loery Fund website,
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Looking Backwards to the Future: Some Tentative Conclusions
Contrary to popular wisdom, the future does not lay out in front of you. The future is something that comes upon you from behind your back, with the past receding away before your eyes (Persig, 1974, 417). The recognition of heritage as malleable, present-centred and future-oriented appears to bring us full circle. Rather than catalogue a seemingly inevitable chronology of a ‘heritage movement’, I have aempted to sketch a historical narrative of how the heritage process has been deployed, articulated and consumed through time. We have seen important transitions in how official heritage is carried, from obsessions over site, or over artefactual integrity, to viewing emotion and embodied practice as legitimate and valuable vehicles through which history cultures may be practised. We have seen how developments in technology – and the control of this technology – went hand in hand with developments over how heritage was produced and consumed. And we have seen huge changes in the politics of that production and consumption, with questions of access to the means to promote, display and enjoy heritage playing a crucial role. In all of this, a sense of purpose is critical. At present, this purpose is oen found in educational benefits and community leadership, policies of social inclusion and even economic regeneration – goals which, on the face of it, seem a long way from the heritage agendas of the past. As Mason (2004) points out, however, the faith that heritage contains a power to transform is common to heritage in all periods. Despite Orwell’s statement that history is produced by the winners in society in order to support their moral, political and economic authority, heritage today appears to be far less strident in its claims. Indeed, some have noted that heritage today oen appears to be led by the losers in society.12 Certainly there appears to be greater cogency and value given to the heritage of those that have been deprived of agency in the past – the downtrodden, the exploited and the defeated – even if this only scratches at the surface of the hegemonic power structures of authority. An extreme relativism in the validity of heritage narratives can be witnessed at Avebury today, where one can find the official heritage story of the National Trust, English Heritage and the Alexander Keiller Museum competing with New Age interpretations of the site – the heritage of ley lines, mystical occurrences and spiritual healing. Narratives of archaeological science and dioramas that outline the story of Alexander Keiller’s plans are now joined by tea-rooms, nature walks and courses on water divining as means through which the past can be consumed. In many ways, however, it is the recognition that we all have agency in the production of cultural memory that is most important.
12 This theme is strong, for instance, in David Lowenthal’s lecture, entitled ‘Reparition, Restitution, Reparations’, at the British Academy, 8 December 2006.
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At the beginning of the chapter I highlighted the inevitable open-endedness of the everyday ‘pieces’ and ‘performances’ of heritage, which it is impossible to date or categorize – the ordinary, conscious and unconscious elaboration and repetition of cultural memory that has both history and prehistory, but which has no beginning or end. These are the ‘small heritages’ that have always existed, but which are rarely celebrated. At one level, heritage today is about:
the promotion of a consensus version of history by state-sanctioned cultural institutions and elites to regulate cultural and social tensions in the present. On the other hand, heritage may also be a resource that is used to challenge and redefine received values and identities by a range of subaltern groups (Smith, 2006, 4).
While this chapter has necessarily concentrated on providing a narrative history of the ‘big heritage’, we must not forget the small heritages, which do not always have to take the form of overt resistance to officialdom. Indeed, with the present spread of blogs, podcasts and digital archives such as myspace.com and youtube.com on the internet, it is perhaps these small heritages that will form the basis of the material, the thoughts, practices and plans that we pass on to the next generation – our prospective memory if you like. What the next generation will do with this material, this effort and these memories, however – their retrospective memories – is up to them.
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